Growing the Blue Point Juniper Topiary

The Blue Point Juniper Topiary is a versatile evergreen, offering year-round beauty and structure to gardens or patios. Available in single or double ball styles, it’s perfect for creating a formal garden aesthetic or adding an accent to entryways or walkways. This topiary thrives in zones 4-9, making it suitable for a wide range of climates.

Size and Appearance

Maturing at a height of 12-15 feet with a width of 8-10 feet, the Blue Point Juniper features soft, blue-green foliage with a dense, pyramidal structure. Its sculpted topiary shape draws the eye upward, making it a standout in any landscape. The compact, tidy form ensures it complements any space without overpowering it.

Using the Blue Point Juniper Topiary in Your Garden

Perfect for container planting, the Blue Point Juniper Topiary can easily move between patio, porch, or garden settings. It serves as an elegant focal point in both formal and modern garden designs. Use it to flank doorways, line walkways, or create visual interest within flower beds.

Hardiness

This evergreen is hardy across USDA zones 4-9, making it resistant to cold winters and hot summers. Its natural resilience ensures it thrives in various conditions while retaining its distinctive shape and vibrant color.

Sun Exposure and Soil Conditions

The Blue Point Juniper Topiary flourishes in full sun, requiring at least six hours of direct sunlight daily. It prefers well-drained soils but adapts to various soil types, including sandy or clay soils, as long as water does not pool.

Maintenance and Pruning

Low maintenance by nature, this juniper requires minimal care to maintain its beauty. Occasional pruning ensures the topiary retains its sculpted shape, while its drought tolerance reduces the need for frequent watering. Simply water during dry periods and fertilize once a year for optimal growth.

History and Origin of the Blue Point Juniper Topiary

The Blue Point Juniper (Juniperus chinensis ‘Blue Point’) originates from East Asia and has been cultivated for centuries for its ornamental appeal. Its natural hardiness and ability to be shaped into stunning topiaries have made it a favorite among gardeners seeking elegance and structure.

Buying the Blue Point Juniper Topiary at The Tree Center

• Slender, tight column of dark green without any trimming needed
• Foliage turns blue-gray in winter
• 20 feet tall and only 4 feet wide - naturally
• Very tolerant of drought, sun, heat, cold and deer
• Great choice for vertical accents anywhere in your garden

• Cascading branches fall to the ground from a short trunk
• Spiky blue-green needles turn purple in winter
• Wave-like look very different from other dwarf junipers
• Very drought tolerant and grows well in poor soils
• Fits perfectly into Asian-themed gardens

Growing Holger’s Juniper

Size and Appearance

Holger’s Juniper is a conifer evergreen forming a broad mound, 3 to 5 feet tall and about the same width. It develops with a flat top and more-or-less horizontal branches, ending in graceful, slightly pendulous stems. It branches densely from the ground, and only after many years does it develop a noticeable trunk at ground level. The bark flakes attractively, and is dark brown. The leaves are densely packed along the stems, each one a slender tapering triangle, standing out a little from the stem and ending in a narrow point. New growth is creamy-yellow to a slightly greenish sulfur-yellow, and it holds that color for some weeks, making a great contrast in your beds. Gradually the color fades, until by late summer it is a striking silver-blue, which then holds throughout winter until new growth develops in spring. Old plants may develop glossy black berries about one-third of an inch in diameter.

Using Holger’s Juniper in Your Garden

This evergreen is perfect for a striking foreground in your foundation planting. It’s graceful, slightly pendulous form and dramatic colors really stand out and add great beauty to your garden. It could be used in the foreground of larger garden beds, alone or as an edging. It is especially effective on slopes and among boulders and rocks, and even as an interesting lawn specimen. It could also be grown in a planter, and it is a beautiful and easy plant for making into a bonsai tree.

Hardiness

Holger’s Juniper is hardy almost everywhere, growing from zone 4 to zone 8, in all but the hottest and coldest parts of the country. It grows well in mountain areas and in dry regions, but also in urban locations. Despite its horizontal growth, the stems are very strong and resist even heavy snow loads without breaking.

Sun Exposure and Soil Conditions

Like all junipers, Holger’s Juniper grows best in full sun, with the most vigorous and dense growth, and the best foliage colors. It will grow in any well-drained soil, including sandy and rocky ground, poor urban soils, clays, and in ordinary garden soils as well. It is drought tolerant and has a high tolerance of salt-spray in coastal locations.

Maintenance and Pruning

Usually free of pests or diseases, Holger’s Juniper is incredibly easy to grow. Water regularly when newly planted, but once a good root system has developed it is tough, reliable and drought resistant. It is best left untrimmed, to enjoy the natural arching form, but if you do need to reduce its spread, do this by trimming branches back to just in front of a branch growing upwards, so that the cut is hidden. Don’t trim with shears or hedge trimmers.

History and Origin of Holger’s Juniper

The scaly juniper, Juniperus squamata, is called that because of the scale-like pointed leaves and the flaking bark. It is also called the Himalayan juniper because it grows across a large area from northeastern Afghanistan to western Yunnan in China. It is found up to 15,000 feet above sea-level. Known as gao shan bai (高 山 柏) in China, it is a popular tree for bonsai and penjing, admired for the way it develops weather-beaten gray trunks and horizontal forms.

The variety called ‘Holger’ was found as a unique seedling in 1946 by Holger Jensen of Ramloesa Nursery in Helsingborg, Sweden. It is likely that it is actually a hybrid plant, from a cross that took place at the nursery between a plant of Juniperus squamata and a plant of Juniperus x pfitzeriana ‘Pfitzeriana Aurea’, a large hybrid juniper with golden foliage.

Buying Holger’s Juniper at the Tree Center

This striking juniper isn’t often available, so you aren’t going to see it in every garden in your neighborhood – just yours, where its graceful and unique beauty will make it a stand-out plant and give your garden a special look. Order now, because knowledgeable gardeners quickly buy quality plants like this one – they will soon all be gone.

Growing the Gold Star Juniper

Size and Appearance

The Gold Star Juniper is a spreading conifer evergreen with horizontal branches radiating out from the central trunk just like the rays of a star. At first it is a single flat layer, but as it matures it develops multiple layers of branches, rising gradually to about 3 feet tall and ultimately to perhaps 4 feet tall. It spreads outwards into a circle that will become 5 or even 6 feet across within 10 years, so don’t overcrowd it when planting – allow enough room for its development.

The branches are covered in sprays of foliage that is flat against the stems like scale when newly sprouting, but that is otherwise entirely made up of small triangular needles growing around the stems at an angle. These ‘juvenile’ leaves give a fluffy or fuzzy look to the plant, different from the thread-like leaves of many other junipers. The foliage is bright glowing yellow in spring and when newly-sprouted, turning chartreuse to sea-green as it matures. Older leaves are more bluish-green with golden overtones, and even in winter there is a significant golden look to the plant.

The changing foliage colors create a lot of visual depth, with the center of the plant being darker, while the tips are bright yellow. Older plants may develop clusters of blue berry-like cones in winter, but these are not the juniper berries used for flavoring.

Using the Gold Star Juniper in Your Garden

This plant is highly-effective for covering areas of ground, especially on slopes, where it gives good erosion control. Plant it along the front of a bed along a driveway to soften the hard line, setting plants 18 to 24 inches back from the edge. Plant in groups to cover larger areas, allowing 3 or 4 feet between plants. Grow it among boulders and in rock gardens, or in sunny, exposed places, including sea-side locations. Turn a boring and bare slope into a cascade of beauty by mixing the Gold Star Juniper with a variety of other creeping and trailing plants like blue junipers and cotoneasters.

Hardiness

The Gold Star Juniper is very cold-resistant, growing without winter damage in zone 4, and also growing well in just about every part of the country.

Sun Exposure and Soil Conditions

Full sun is needed for good growth and color with the Gold Star Juniper. More than an hour or two of shade each day will turn the foliage more green, and encourage root diseases. This plant needs well-drained soil, so avoid wet and low-lying areas, but otherwise, it grows in just about any soil, from heavy clay to dry sands and gravels, including alkaline soils.

Maintenance and Pruning

Deer won’t eat it, and pests or diseases are not found when grown in the sun with good drainage. Really, there is nothing to do with the Gold Star Juniper but plant it, water each week for the first few months, and then enjoy it. It is drought resistant, so watering is rarely if even needed once it is well-established. We recommend allowing enough room when planting to avoid the need to trim, as this easily destroys the graceful arching and softly-weeping form of this tree. If you do need to reduce the spread, never cut back into branches without leaves, as they will not resprout. Remove the tips of branches by hand, cutting back to just in front of a shoot on the top of the stem, to hide the cut and keep it looking natural.

History and Origin of the Gold Star Juniper

If you are even in Berlin, visit the Späth Arboretum, where there is a very old juniper growing that was collected in 1866 by the French missionary and botanist Armand David in Inner Mongolia. At first this plant was thought to be an unusual form of the Chinese Juniper, Juniperus chinensis. In 1947 the American plantsman Peter Jacobus Van Melle took a deeper look at it, and realized it was a natural hybrid between the Chinese juniper and the savin juniper, Juniperus sabina. Both of them grow naturally in Mongolia. He named it Juniperus x media, a name still in use, but today the name Juniperus x pfitzeriana, the Pfitzer juniper, is more correct.

In 1923 a Pfitzer juniper growing at the D. Hill Nursery in Dundee, Illinois sprouted a branch with golden foliage. This became Pfitzeriana Aurea. In 1961 some of those plants were growing at the wholesale nursery of J.C. Bakker & Sons Ltd. In St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. One plant seemed different to the sharp-eyed grower, and he put it aside, growing pieces of it and studying them for 9 years. It was indeed different, with a lower, more compact habit and with entirely juvenile foliage. In 1975 it was patented as Bakaurea, and that patent (PP# 3,801) expired in 1995. Although never registered as a trademark, the name Gold Star was given to this plant, and that name has stuck.

Buying the Gold Star Juniper at the Tree Center

This juniper has been around a while, but it has stood the test of time and still stands out as a great spreading juniper of medium size, that can be relied on for effective planting and durability. It is always popular and desirable, so order now, because out stock will soon all be gone.